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Journal of Undergraduate Research

Keywords

sucrose, self administration, alcoholism, Wistar rats

College

Family, Home, and Social Sciences

Department

Psychology

Abstract

Alcoholism is a problem that affects almost the whole world. The purpose of our proposed study was to record neuronal activity of the ventral tegmental area (VTA) of male Wistar rats during self-administration of sucrose, which is a natural reward for rats. Although sucrose administration seems far from alcoholism, our goal was to see how these neurons act in during a behavior known to be pleasurable since past literature suggested that rats would not self-administer ethanol to dependence. Our research did take a turn, however, and we developed a system where we saw rats self-administer ethanol intravenously. We decided to stay with ethanol self-administration as long as we could to get direct information about the brain’s reward pathway activity during ethanol self-administration. We found data that suggests that VTA γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) neurons are involved in anticipation of reward from self-administration of ethanol.

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